I often can't tell how many consumers care where the grapes in their wine come from, so long as the wine meets their expectations at a cost they want to pay.

How much does it matter to you whether the grapes were grown in the winery's field or somewhere in the state where the winery is located? Some such as Waltz and Allegro and Karamoor and Boordy and others are largely estate producers, making most out of what they grow. A number of others, such as Pennsylvania's Tamanend and Seven Mountains wineries, freely admit they bring all their grapes in, some from out of state. Wineries can get their grapes from anywhere now; there are no rules like before restricting how far they can go to bring in juice.

Grape availability nationally could become more of an issue over the next few years as factors of demand, disease and the climate conspire to limit production. Wineries continue to open across the country, including Pennsylvania and Maryland. Frost does its own damage annually, and below-zero temperatures this winter likely have taken a big toll, from Ohio west. Red blotch disease could impede planting for at least a year or more, as I've written about and has been documented elsewhere, including this story on a Washington state web site. The California drought is another factor; winebusinessdaily.com carried this story out of Houston about how Texas wineries figure to be adversely affected.

And there's the matter of the initial investment and how many wineries are bypassing grapes-growing, at least in the early going, in their business model. Lucie Morton, who advises some of the East Coast's most respected wineries in vineyard plantings and management, said by phone the other day that the East Coast, in general, is a victim of its own success.

"We haven’t really tied the growth of wineries with the growth of
vineyards," she said. "I think less than half of the wine in Virginia
is Virginia fruit."

She continued: "It's
a problem [from Pennsylvania south into North Carolina] because,
here's the thing. The grape growing is the least profitable part of it. It's a
difficult endeavor. It's capital intensive. It takes 10 years to get yourself
back on kind of a profitable situation, and where the money is in the wine making. And you get people who just jump right in there with in the winery without
really having a vineyard, because they see that's where the profit is. One of
the things that I see starting to happen is some of the winery quality
alliances, grape-growing associations. They're really trying to differentiate
and be certain the consumer knows what's estate and what isn't."

I posed the question to Rob Deford at Boordy Vineyards in northcentral Maryland, a disciple of Morton's who just completed a full replanting over the last few years and opened a state-of-the-art winery, at least for this area, last year. Do customers care where the grapes come from? Based on his investment, yes.

"As i look out across the landscape, what i think that really matters to consumers and the unique asset that each winery brings is its regional identify, and even more specifically, its place," he said. "And so, yes, we can all make wine as I do from grapes all over the country. and i certainly support our fine-wine habit with cash flow from those other wines. But where the future lies, in my opinion, as money and resources permit, is in increasing emphasis on the regional identity. And i think that's the future. For our region, that's where the credibility is going to come from and hopefully that's where our true livelihood will come from down the road. . . . That's where I've been trying to invest our resources, int he whole project we've been involved in here, top to bottom.

"I'm not turning a cold shoulder to the wines that have been our cash-flow wines," he added. "But I think the reputation for growth is in the unique offerings that we can make."